A Leader Abandoned, Overthrown and Humbled

Shakespeare’s “Richard II” is essentially the story of a man who loses a kingdom and gains a soul. Of course it also explores the nature and obligations of political power and the processes of history. But it’s the sad poetry of the title character’s downfall, not the stern lessons in right rulership it may impart, that gives the play its haunting beauty.

Michael Cumpsty traces the gestation of Richard’s soul with affecting clarity in the uneven new production for the Classic Stage Company, directed by Brian Kulick. (Mr. Cumpsty gave a similarly thoughtful performance as Hamlet for Mr. Kulick and the company last season.) You can almost see it coming into being in a single scene as Richard awakens to the previously unthinkable possibility of loss. In the worldview he has lived by until this point, kings don’t lose things.

The scene comes at the end of the production’s first act, when the callow, self-absorbed Richard returns from Ireland to be greeted with the news that virtually all of England — lords and littles alike — has arrayed itself against him, on the side of the rebel Bolingbroke. Mr. Cumpsty’s Richard assimilates this knowledge with a shifting mixture of acceptance and denial, as anger gives way to sadness and finally to simple wonder at the merciless power of fate.

The impulsive Richard initially succumbs to a shallow sense of wounded dignity: “Time has set a blot upon my pride.” This is shaken off quickly, but his reassertion of his royal power comes with a new note: “I had forgot myself,” he says. “Am I not king?” The question mark opens the door to doubt.

The process is concluded when further bad news is told, and the outrages of ego are spent. The subdued Richard, his eyes locked on the dirt beneath his feet, sees deeper into his predicament and discovers the answer to that last question: he is not a king but a man, in the end.

What follows is one of Shakespeare’s most famous speeches lamenting the vanity of worldly glory: “For God’s sake let’s sit upon the ground and tell sad stories of the deaths of kings!” Mr. Cumpsty delivers it with moving grace. A few soft breaths of self-pity dissolve into the quiet birth pangs of a new philosophy that sees the hollow, provisional nature of worldly stature, the lie inherent in all life’s promise.

Mr. Kulick’s production, performed on a minimalist set washed in gleaming red and gold, is sleek and functional, if a little bland and a little glib. Early on, Richard, his queen and his courtiers are seen swilling Champagne, groping one another and snorting cocaine. Oh, the decadence! (Needless to say, the production uses modern dress.) Despite such naughty antics, the first hour contains a lot of sluggish patches, and too much shouting from Graham Winton’s Bolingbroke. The real drama — the king’s spiritual awakening in the crucible of defeat — does not begin until midway through the play, after all.

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Doan Ly and Michael Cumpsty in "Richard II."Credit...Joan Marcus

David Greenspan, with his rococo line readings and off-kilter persona, enlivens the functional proceedings as a smirking Bagot and, more surprisingly, as an unusually impassioned Bishop of Carlisle. The nongeriatric Jon DeVries expends so much energy trying to seem senescent and ailing as the dying John of Gaunt that he gives short shrift to the tender lyricism of the play’s second-most-famous speech, in which Gaunt laments the passing of England’s glory (the paean to the “sceptered isle”). George Morfogen, with his lugubrious eyes and mournful jowls, is an emotionally eloquent Duke of York.

But Richard’s journey from the throne to a prison cell is where the action lies in this most unmartial of Shakespeare’s tales of English kings. And Mr. Cumpsty proves a worthy tour guide, lighting the king’s mournful path with insight and intelligence. The downward trajectory is finally reversed in Richard’s last breath, as the king relinquishes his only remaining possession: “Mount, mount, my soul! Thy seat is up on high; Whilst my gross flesh sinks downward, here to die.”